EU Commissioner for Trade: Products from offspring of cloned animals already on the market

Munich, Bruxelles, 3 March 2011. A non-public EU Commission paper confirms that food from offsprings of cloned animals are already on the European market. The animals get into the market via the import of breeding material from the US. The EU Trade Commission argues that in future too these products should not be regulated, labelled or controlled for unexpected risks, because so far no systems have been established for registering the animals in exporting countries such as the US. If the EU Commission succeeds, consumers within the EU will not get any information about these products like milk and meat, despite a high level of consumer rejection of cloning of animals for food production.

“Products that are widely rejected on ethical concerns are to be disposed of via consumers. The EU Commissioner De Gucht is giving in without a fight to industrial agriculture lobbyists. This is astonishing since only very few companies are making profits from this highly controversial technology,” says Christoph Then at Testbiotech in Germany.

(NaturalNews) The major cattle cloning companies in the United States have admitted that they have not bothered to try and keep meat from the offspring of clones out of the U.S. food supply, in spite of a request by the FDA several years ago.

“This is a fairy tale that this technology is not being used and is not already in the food chain,” said Donald Coover, who owns a specialty cattle semen business. “Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or they’re not being honest.”

Coover admitted that for several years, he has been openly selling semen from cloned bulls. He is sure, he added, that others are doing the same.